As far as Bob Archer and Allen Borgwardt of Neenah are concerned, they’re married.

The two men, who have been together for 21 years and registered as domestic partners in 2009, were the second same-sex couple to publicly wed in Winnebago County last month after a federal judge ruled Wisconsin’s same-sex marriage ban unconstitutional.

“As far as we’re concerned, right now, we consider our marriage certificate right now as a valid legal document,” Archer said Tuesday, about a month after marrying Borgwardt on the steps of the Winnebago County Courthouse. “I don’t care what the state says at this point. It was issued at a point where it was legal. ... As far as we’re concerned, it’s a legal document that says we’re married.”

Officials at the American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin are considering filing a lawsuit to make sure it stays that way, and has been working to enlist Archer and Borgwardt and other couples in the court action.

The nonprofit, nonpartisan organization wants to ensure that the more than 500 couples statewide who married during the seven-day period in June will remain married, said Molly Collins, associate director of the ACLU of Wisconsin.

“A refusal to recognize these marriages would restrict their due process to remain married,” Collins said, citing similar cases in Michigan and Utah. “It is something that we’re considering. Obviously, we hope we don’t have to because, obviously, the attorney general may choose to recognize (the legal status of the marriages).”

On June 6, U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb ruled the state’s ban on marriage for same-sex couples as unconstitutional, but she didn’t provide any direction to local clerks about whether they could begin issuing licenses, which opened a brief window for same-sex couples to marry. A week later, that opportunity ended when she granted state Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen’s request for an emergency stay, effectively halting marriages until the state filed an appeal.

Whether the ACLU would pursue a new lawsuit hinged on whether Van Hollen appealed a federal judge’s ruling that declared the state’s ban on marriage for same-sex couples as unconstitutional — an action Van Hollen took Thursday. On Friday, Crabb issued a brief order denying the ACLU’s request to lift the stay, saying the request doesn’t matter since Van Hollen has filed his notice.

“Our attorneys are still researching; they’re still talking to the many couples who have been put in this legal limbo by this situation. We’re still gathering the facts and making sure we have a valid case,” Collins said when asked about a potential timeline of any litigation.

Meanwhile, the marriage licenses of two Winnebago County couples who didn’t marry before Crabb issued the stay have licenses that are about to reach their 30-day expiration date, with one set to expire on Wednesday and the other on Thursday, County Clerk Sue Ertmer said.

“At this point, we have not heard back from them,” Ertmer said of the couples, who told the county last month they planned to wait and see whether anything changed at the state level before their licenses expired. “We may follow up with a phone call early next wee to see what they want to do. ... We’ll give them their money back, if that’s what they want.”

Ertmer doesn’t know how many, if any, of the licenses she issued in June to same-sex couples have been processed by the State Vital Records Office, saying she has not had any communication from the state in terms of what’s going on with the issue.

It was unclear Friday how many more than 500 marriage licenses that were issued to same-sex couples statewide have been processed by the Wisconsin Vital Records Office. A spokeswoman for the Wisconsin Department of Health Services, which oversees the office, did not provide numbers when asked this week by Oshkosh Northwestern Media.

“The State Office of Vital Records is following existing state laws with regard to performing its administrative functions of registering, maintaining and preserving records,” communications director Stephanie Smiley said in an emailed statement.

The office had been holding the marriage licenses that had been issued by county clerks but started processing them June 11, after receiving guidance from Van Hollen’s office that it could move ahead because processing the documents was an administrative duty the office needed to fulfill.

Archer said there is no doubt in his mind that his marriage to Borgwardt is legal, but a sense of uncertainty and frustration remains when it comes to whether the couple has the same rights and privileges as other couples, especially since they lost their domestic partnership status when they married.

“It basically kind of bogs down the wheels of progress right now,” Archer said. “In the eyes of the law, we have no rights as a legal couple. ... If it’s legal for some (in other states), it should be legal for all. That’s the basis of our democracy.”

Nathaniel Shuda: (920) 426-6632, nshuda@thenorthwestern.com or @onwnshuda on Twitter. The Associated Press contributed to this report.